THE RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE The Rift Valley Institute is a non-profit research and training organization working with communities and institutions in Eastern Africa, including Sudan and the Horn.
RVI programmes connect local knowledge to global information systems, aiming to modify development practice. They include field-based social research, support for indigenous educational institutions, in-country training courses and a digital library.
Fellows of the Institute are regional academic specialists and practitioners in the fields of development, conservation, media, law and human rights. |
 Field Courses 2010: Sudan and the Horn of Africa
Applications are now open for this year's Rift Valley Institute field courses. The Horn of Africa Course will be held from Saturday 29 May to Friday 4 June in Lamu, Kenya. The Sudan Course will be held from Saturday 12 June to Friday 18 June in Rumbek, Southern Sudan. The courses are intensive, one-week, graduate-level, residential programmes. Taught by leading regional and international specialists, they provide a fast-track introduction to the history, political economy and culture of a country or region, challenging assumptions and offering new perspectives on politics, development and other current issues. The courses are designed for local and expatriate peacekeepers, aid workers, diplomats, researchers, campaigners, business people and journalists. Both courses offer a full programme of talks, seminars and visits to sites of local interest. The courses are residential; there are many opportunities for informal discussion with the teaching staff and other participants. For further details see Courses. For prospectuses and application forms please write to the Horn Course Administrator or the Sudan Course Administrator
 A Growing Election Crisis in Sudan - تزايد أزمة الانتخابات في السودان
Two RVI reports highlight the growing crisis in Sudan. Decisions and Deadlines: A critical year for Sudan, by Edward Thomas, analyses the dangers the country faces in the current election year. The report, co-published by Chatham House, the International Rescue Committee and the Rift Valley Institute, analyses the complexities of the electoral process and the risk of renewed war. The overarching question, it argues, is whether the Sudanese state can represent the interests of all Sudan’s peoples, or only the elites in the centre. Elections in Sudan: Learning from Experience, by Justin Willis, Atta al-Battahani and Peter Woodward, documents abuses that have compromised previous Sudanese elections. They include mismanagement of registration, stuffing and switching of ballot boxes, vote‐buying, intimidation and interference in news media. In a new update the authors report that these abuses are already beginning to be repeated: the international community is facing a stark choice: support an election that is likely to be badly flawed, or abandon a key component of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Elections in Sudan is published in Arabic and in English. Both reports can be downloaded below.
 2009 Civil Society Seminar in Juba
A Juba seminar in August 2009 drew together Southern Sudanese leaders to begin a debate about the relationship between the state and society in South Sudan at a crucial moment in its history. The meeting opened with a debate between Riek Machar, the Vice-President of the Government of Southern Sudan, Acuil Malith Banggol, of the SPLM and Alfred Lokuji, of Juba University that tried to define the relationship between Southern Sudan’s largely rural and tribal society and its unique state authority; and the place of the governing SPLM in that relationship. Dong Samuel Luak from the South Sudan Law Society gave a paper on the role of civil society in holding the recently-formed Government of Southern Sudan to account for its human rights commitments and its stewardship of national resources. And Priscilla Kuch of the Human Rights Committee in the National Assembly related civil society to social change in a presentation on urbanisation in the South. The meeting brought together political leaders, representatives from the churches, the SPLM and social movements such as the disability movement; academics and traditional authorities, from all regions of South Sudan.
 The Rift Valley Messenger
The current issue of the RVI newsletter contains items on current research into election history in Sudan, future RVI courses, oral history in Southern Sudan and the expansion of the Sudan Open Archive
 Against the Gathering Storm - and other RVI co-publications
Eddie Thomas, Director of the 2009 RVI Sudan Course, is the author of a policy paper on Sudan's political future, Against the Gathering Storm: Securing Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2009). Sally Healy, a member of the teaching staff of the RVI Horn of Africa Course is the author of a study of peace processes in the region, Lost Opportunities in the Horn of Africa (2008). The latter is the final paper from a series of specialist meetings jointly organised by Chatham House, the Rift Valley Institute, the Royal Institute of African Affairs and the School of Oriental and African Studies. Other publications arising from the meetings include; Ethiopia and Eritrea: Allergic to Persuasion by Sally Healy and Martin Plaut, The Rise and Fall of Mogadishu’s Islamic Courts by Cedric Barnes and Harun Hassan and Sudan: Where is the Comprehensive Peace Agreement Heading? by Sally Healy. A book based on a conference co-sponsored by the RVI was recently published by Hurst: China Returns to Africa is edited by Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares.
 Improved and expanded digital library for Sudan - SOA 2.0 
An expanded version of the Sudan Open Archive is now online, featuring an improved user interface and access to around a thousand books and documents about Sudan. SOA 2.0 is a searchable, full-text database that covers all regions of the country, making a wide range of material available in digital form for the first time. It contains dictionaries, human rights reports, historical material on the environment and extensive documentation of local peace meetings in Southern and Western Sudan. There are also key documents on national politics. Among the many books and reports in the Archive are The Dhein Massacre by Ushari Mahmud and Suliman Baldo, the report of the Abyei Boundaries Commission, dictionaries of Sudanese Arabic and Juba Arabic and F.W.Andrews' three-volume The Flowering Plants of Sudan. SOA 2.0 also incorporates an internet guide with links to several hundred Sudan-related websites, searchable by key words.
 A school where girls come first
Marol Academy is a community primary school in Southern Sudan, in Warab state. It opened in 2008 with 350 students and seven teachers. Hundreds of would-be students had to be turned away. Despite the North-South peace agreement of 2005 the new government of South Sudan has been slow to rebuild the educational system; the Marol Academy is one of a handful of functioning schools in the state. The school was founded by Dr Jok Madut Jok, an RVI Fellow born in Warab. Unusually, in a region where women have historically been excluded from education, it has more girl pupils than boys. There are over two hundred girls studying there, the result of an extended campaign to persuade local families to send their daughters to school. The Academy is, in the words of its founder, Dr Jok Madut Jok, “a girls’ school that takes boys”.
 China returns to Africa
China Returns to Africa, edited by Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares, is based on an international conference in Cambridge co-sponsored by the Institute.
The book, published by Hurst, is a multidisciplinary examination of Chinese approaches to Africa, including papers on the history of China’s relations with Tanzania and Sudan.
 Sudan local peace report updated
The Institute has updated its report, Local Peace Processes in Sudan. The report offers an analytical account of the growth of “people-to-people” peace meetings in Sudan and its borderlands. The new version includes an expanded bibliography and up-dated time-chart of peace meetings over the last two decades in Southern and Northern Sudan (including Darfur and the transitional zone between North and South). Full-text versions of reports cited in the bibliography have been incorporated into the Sudan Open Archive.
 Sudan Abductee Database
The Sudan Abductee Database is the outcome of an eighteen-month field investigation in Bahr-el-Ghazal, Southern Sudan. A revised and updated version was made available in 2005. The investigation was designed to create a record of persons abducted during the civil war in Southern Sudan by militias operating out of Government-controlled areas of the North. RVI researchers recorded the details of more than 10,000 individual abductees.
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ON THIS PAGE | • | Field Courses 2010: Sudan and the Horn of Africa | | • | A Growing Election Crisis in Sudan - تزايد أزمة الانتخابات في السودان | | • | 2009 Civil Society Seminar in Juba | | • | The Rift Valley Messenger | | • | Against the Gathering Storm - and other RVI co-publications | | • | Improved and expanded digital library for Sudan - SOA 2.0 | | • | A school where girls come first | | • | China returns to Africa | | • | Sudan local peace report updated | | • | Sudan Abductee Database |
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